Sons Of Anarchy season 3 episode 3 review: Home

This review contains spoilers if you haven’t yet seen the episode.

The opening episodes of Sons Of Anarchy season 3 haven’t been directionless, but they certainly have been juggling several large plot arcs at the same time. Thankfully, episode three, Home, compacts the plots and, with some old faces and new ones, gives us a more streamlined end result.

If you’ll cast your mind back to last week, you’ll remember that Amelia got herself kidnapped by Gemma at Nate’s house, while the Sons where planning a trip to Canada to find their old friend, Cameron, who was actually dead and in Belfast.

Still keeping up? Well, let’s start from the top.

Tara is currently with Gemma, at her father, Nate’s house. The episode starts with Amelia taped to a wheelchair in Nate’s basement. During all the excitement of kidnapping Amelia, Gemma failed to notice Nate driving off in his car. The problem is that, due to his dementia, no one knows where he may have been. We, the viewers, are shown where he is. Nate is shown next to a pond, pointing a gun to his head.

Hal Holbrook’s performance as Nate has been a highlight of the series so far, and this week’s episode is his finest. Nate does not commit suicide, but upon returning to his house, he is thinking clearly. Nate remembers that his wife, Rose, is dead. He can also remember shooting Tig. The performance, as a whole, is heartbreaking, particularly when he says that the days that he can think clearly are the worst ones.

While this is happening upstairs, Tara is attending to the sucker punch that Gemma gave Amelia. Tara’s altruistic nature is quickly taken advantage of when she cuts loose the tape on one of Amelia’s wrists in order to get the blood flowing, and ends up getting knocked out. Amelia attempts to escape, but a tussle with Gemma results in a knife in Amelia’s chest, and thus ends her tenure in Sons Of Anarchy.

There is now a problem. There is a dead body in the house and a serious need to get rid of it. Tig calls in Bachman, who is played by the one and only Stephen King (and you get the reference in the character name, right?). Bachman is creepy as hell. His speciality is disposing of bodies. There’s a part where he cops a feel of a recently expired, Amelia. I felt my skin crawl.

Elsewhere, the threads between Charming and Belfast are starting to tie up. We are enlightened as to what happened to Half Sack’s girlfriend, Cherry. She is in Belfast, working with Cameron’s sister, Maureen. We are also briefly introduced to the Belfast chapter of the Sons Of Anarchy. It is very brief and no names are given, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we meet them again soon.

Back in Charming, the Sons have the serious issue of locating money and guns to deal with the Mayans in Lodi. The Chinese gang can supply both, if the Sons supply some girls for a porn party. It looks like a deal until Opie starts kicking ass when he spots his girlfriend, Lyla, about to get it on with one of the revellers. 

The Sons also have a bit of a situation on their hands, in that they are all due to be back in jail shortly due to their bail conditions changing. To be honest, this plot arc is a little confusing for non-US audiences, and without some background knowledge of US law, it’s a bit of a struggle. I have a lot of respect for Kirk Sutter for sticking to an accurate depiction rather than dumbing it down a little and maximising the potential audience, but honestly, I struggled to get my head around it. 

Anyway, the Sons are planning on jumping bail and going to Canada to find Cameron, and Abel. This plan is then changed when the Belfast chapter send an email containing a picture of the dead Cameron. This plants Cameron, and hopefully Abel, in Belfast. 

It’s starting to feel that a lot of the seemingly unrelated plot strands are now tying together and the season is beginning to pick up some speed.

Hopefully, some more Stephen King and a trip to Belfast next week will make for a very exciting episode.

Read our review of the episode 2, Oiled, here.